The National World War II Museum
The National World War II Museum provides tools for studying the timeline and glossary for WWII. The timeline covers 1921-1945. The glossary covers a wide range of terms including leaders, places, and military lingo. Students can learn from it in a variety of ways. For one example, it offers them an efficient way to research the WWII battles highlighted in the Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework. It also maintains an archive of WWII oral history that could provide rich primary resources. Other topics available include the Science and Technology of WWII and bibliographies on the Holocaust for different grade levels.
The design of the site is fairly busy, and students may need help honing in on a task. But there is a high-level menu EDUCATION, which leads fairly easily to For Students and then to Timeline, Glossary, and other links. The site also offers an exploratory package that a school can purchase for $100.
Historian and author Stephen E. Ambrose founded the National World War II Museum Foundation in 1991. The museum opened its doors in 2000. It appears to be supported primarily through donations and visiting fees, as well as through Smithsonian.
firstworldwar.com a multi-media history of WWI
firstworldwar.com is a rich multi-media site. Students can explore such topics as How it Began, Weaponry, Who's Who, and Battles.
This site is well designed and reasonable to navigate.
The National World War II Museum is a nonprofit (.org) This site, however, appears to be commercial (.com). firstworldwar.com appears to be for profit because it arranges tours of battle sites from WWI. The information on the site, though, appears quite strong. There are myriad primary source documents, for example, linked into the timeline tool.
Slavery’s Dehumanizing Effects
This page, which is available through EDSITEment, is an example of the kind of highly focused assignment a student might pursue online. Here, the presumption is that the student has read Chapter Six of Frederick Douglass’s narrative and is ready to answer questions about it. The page also provides links to Douglass’s narrative. Thus the teacher can use the questions to facilitate guided reading. This page also has the virtue of allowing students to read and write independently, and at their own pace.
The main shortcoming I sense in the design is that the student writes in answers, but gets no immediate feedback. That shortcoming, however, is a fair trade for having the student write answers to be reviewed later, as opposed to answering only multiple choice questions so that the feedback can be immediate.
EDSITEment is “a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities and is a proud member of the Thinkfinity Consortium of premier educational websites.”
This is another example of a focused site. Here a student can work with four different graphic organizers, one each for analyzing character, conflict, resolution, and setting.
This webpage is nicely designed for the simple interaction. The student can easily select an organizer and fill it in. The feedback then comes from the teacher. Graphic organizers have great value for helping students structure their thinking. These are elementary organizers, but at the right level can make a huge difference for a student.
This site is sponsored by readwritethink.org, which is sponsored by the International Reading Association, NCTE (National Council of English Teachers), and Verizon Thinkfinity. Verizon Thinkfinity is a foundation devoted to improving online education resources.
Separate Is Not Equal: Brown vs. Board of Education
The National Museum of American History provides this site. It offers a variety of means to help students recognize the significance of Brown vs. Board of Education. The one I will highlight is a virtual field trip to the museum. The site offers a tour for middle school students and one for high school students.
The virtual tours allow you to go on a highly informative field trip without leaving the classroom. The quality of the presentation appears extremely high and likely to be engaging. After students have shared this frame of reference, many other class activities and discussions will be much easier to manage.
The National Museum of American History is part of the Smithsonian Institution.